It would be nice to be able to buck the critical orthodoxy and say how tired and overrated Citizen Kane is; but the dulll truth is, it's still, indisputably, one of the great masterpieces of cinema – looking even better in this cleaned-up digital print, which shows off the wonderful clarity and detail of Gregg Toland's "deep focus" camerawork, bolstering the complexities of the story with new layers of feeling.

No wonder Peter O'Toole looks shocked: the prestigious <i>Cahiers du Cinema</i> has revealed its list of the 100 greatest films of all time &ndash; and not one of them was made here. John Lichfield reports

Last week, I came across a review of a book on the plague that devastated Europe and the near East between the sixth and eighth centuries. The what, you say? Well, quite: for centuries, this plague was all but forgotten: we know all about the Black Death, but this plague, which may have been far greater, which decimated cities, wiped out thousands of villages, killed millions, vanished from view.

How does this grab you? On American television last week a commercial aired in which approximately this happened - I only saw it the once, and I was angry straight away, so leave a little room for doubt over exactness. The ad begins with the classic scene from the 1952 movie, Singin' in the Rain, the one where Gene Kelly, with the help of an umbrella, a studio rain-storm, a passer-by or two, some artfully laid-down puddles, and a stern cop, does the number "Singin' in the Rain", a song written by Nacio Herb Brown and Arthur Freed in 1928 but immortalised in this movie.